An Ode to Our Front Yard

And, a wee rant at the end

There was a splendid story in the New York Times last week, titled They Fought the Lawn. And the Lawn Lost. (I have to applaud the NYT for sort of referencing a fine song from The Clash.) The story centered on the Crouches and their yard, which they planted with shrubs and trees and annuals that would benefit wildlife. “You’re thinking more about the soil, and its inhabitants, and how it fits together in the ecosystem,” said Janet Crouch. But their neighbor saw otherwise. He couldn’t enjoy his own property because of the “mess of a jungle” next door.

In addition, and apparently most annoying of all, the Crouches were “planting shrubs and bushes in no particular order.” (Should they have been planted alphabetically, by size, color, shape, speed of growth, or flowering time? Please let me know, or speculate, about the correct planting order.) Furthermore, complained the upset neighbor, the out-of-order yard was “attracting rodents, deer, snakes and bats.” Heavens to Betsy.

My first thought was “Bats!” I am so jealous…and inspired. We recently put up bat boxes in our backyard trying to entice these wonderful animals to roost. We have seen them around our house so I am hopeful.

I can relate to the Crouches, not in having annoying neighbors, but in having a front yard almost completely devoid of grass. When we bought our house in 1998, the front yard was lawn with a couple of rhododendrons (one has died and the other looks like we had tormented it nigh until death) and a crabapple tree (mostly hidden). Now it is a tangle of vegetation so bounteous it hides the house in the summer and creates a tunnel of verdancy between our driveway and the front door.

The beginning of the elimination of our grass. The berm still exists though it’s not easy to tell. Crabapple on far left. Photo taken in 2001. Note the cherry stick, barely in evidence at the right end of the berm.

When we converted the yard to wild, we were like the Crouches, unaware of the correct order to plant. We simply went with native vegetation, including cascara, bleeding heart, salal, Nootka rose, snowberry, camas, wild ginger, and ocean spray. We also planted rosemary, culinary sage, a butterfly bush (since replaced), and a cherry tree, better described as a stick. It is now a huge, cherry-producing tree though we rarely get any, being outcompeted by more mobile rapscallions such as robins, crows, and squirrels. (I periodically mess with the squirrels by shooting water at them, which has little effect beyond reaffirming my immaturity.)

As one should expect, other plants have exploited the habitat. These freelancers include sword ferns, native blackberry, and a Douglas fir, now about twice as tall as our house. Two years ago we attached a nest box to the tree. Within a day a black-capped chickadee came to inspect it and decided, after further exploration, that it would work for a home. Since then chickadees have nested regularly; flicker and juncos have stopped by the box, too.

Our house IS behind this vegetation.

I have previously mentioned the black hawthorn and the annual visit by cedar waxwings but the tree has hosted others. While sitting in our living room one evening, we heard noises clearly not made by humans. When I opened the shade, four raccoons were staring at me. We eyed each other for a few minutes and then they ignored me. So I did the same (5 can play that game) and shut the shade. Others who take advantage of our front yard ecosystem include the occasional LBB (chestnut-backed chickadees and Bewick’s wrens); scatterings of flitterers (bushtits and golden-crowned and ruby-crowned kinglet); dashes of color (Anna’s hummingbirds and Townsend’s and Wilson’s warblers); and the ubiquitous and pleasant (robins and spotted towhees). There may also be a hand trowel that we think we left out there and cannot locate.

The green takeover, in particular by the Nootka roses, which, if left to their own devices, would render the yard completely impenetrable, if they didn’t lose out to snowberries, also hid an apple tree, which I didn’t discover until it was about 20 feet tall. Another time I found a 15 foot tall maple (non-native). The only downside of our new yard is the lack of sunlight. The yard has been reduced to a single, small spot to grow vegetables and the big trees have shaded out blueberries, which no longer produce with the lack of sunlight. (The shade also keeps our house cooler in the summer.)

I know we are not alone in converting our yard from grass to wild. I regularly encounter such yards on my walks/runs around town. I am sure that many neighbors of such yards do not rejoice in these conversions but I am also sure that there are far more plants and animals that appreciate the gesture.

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Small rant - Some people call yards covered in grass “green deserts.” This annoys me. Deserts are far from devoid of life. One of the highlights of visiting the Sonoran desert, as I do every year around this time, is the amazing diversity of plant life. Plus, the greatest bee species diversity on Earth is in the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, and northern Mexico. Even in a geological desert, such as around Moab, the range of plants and animals is impressive. So yards are not green deserts, they are simply areas of paltry diversity that often suck water that could be used elsewhere and require pollutants that shouldn’t be used anywhere.

Podcast - A discussion between me and Philadelphia naturalist Billy Brown. Disregard most of what I said about mountain beavers, at least in the city; we don’t have them here. Clearly a brain fart on my part.